Shapeshifting should have been tied to a druid ascendancy not weapons.

Everybody is theorycrafting playing pathfinder vywern and vulcano sorc and monk xyz etc and not druid. We have new class Druid coming and seems like nobody is planning on playing actually druid as shapeshifting archetype.

Perhaps druid should have one ascendancy dedicated to shapeshifting only and given which keystones you pick up in that ascendancy tree that decides which form you can shapeshift into. I know this is very build limiting but giving shapeshifting to everyone as form of a weapon defeats the purpose of having an actual druid class which has nothing to do with shapeshifting at all. Perhaps this is an oversight or the 3rd ascendancy which will be coming later is the one to fix this? That adds bonuses to shapeshifts as a druid or something?

I mean druid class will probably have a high % because new but seems like it won't even be the best choice for most of the shapeshifting archetype which is kind of weird. A new player coming into the game wanting to play a shapeshifter character will ultimately pick druid because of the lore which happen to have zero synergy to shapeshifting.

I get why they decided to go this way. To have more build variety and all but druid has lost its identity with this. Maybe the class should have been called Seer/Prophet or something instead and have druid as an ascendancy which focuses on shapeshifting.

What do you think?

I'm thinking druid will probably have nodes on the passive tree that are specific to their class. Kinda like how those first spell dmg nodes going north from the start are different for witch and give minion dmg along with a lesser amount of spell

No. They did it right. If you want that you can play Last Epoch or any other normie-tier aprg.

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Jideament#2792 wrote:

No. They did it right. If you want that you can play Last Epoch or any other normie-tier aprg.

Sorry to say but you are very short sighted with this telling people to play other games instead. This is a reddit tier commment right there.

Anyway I said that I get the decision but then don't call the class druid which has absolutely nothing to do with the shapeshifting archetype. Don't base the entire expansion around druidic theme. Call it last of the shapeshifters or last of the Prophets or something would have been way better.

They managed to make monk the monk archetype. Nobody plays sorc with quarterstaffs. How did it not work with druid then? This is obviously a flaw in the design.


They should have nodes on the ascendanceis that implies that it has synergy to shapeshifting. Something like "in bear form you have more armor" or "as a werewolf you have x% more attack speed" etc etc. Something that makes the character/ascendanceis worthwile and focuses on shapeshifting.

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Ispita#4020 wrote:

Sorry to say but you are very short sighted with this telling people to play other games instead. This is a reddit tier commment right there.

I did not say it in an aggressive manner, sorry.

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Ispita#4020 wrote:

They managed to make monk the monk archetype.

This doesn't work for me. I tried Chayula's Acolyte and it didn't feel like a monk and it still won't with the new changes. Even BG3's monk is much better than this thrash in many ways.

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Ispita#4020 wrote:

Nobody plays sorc with quarterstaffs.

It's not because it's unplayable or unfun, it's because it's too complex for simple-minded mammals to figure out, so they wait for a zoomer streamer to do it and maybe play it later.

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Ispita#4020 wrote:

They should have nodes on the ascendanceis that implies that it has synergy to shapeshifting. Something like "in bear form you have more armor" or "as a werewolf you have x% more attack speed" etc. Something that makes the archetype worthwile and focuses on shapeshifting.

True and false at the same time depending on perspective. With this logic you should make Pathfinder a poison ascendancy. It turns out that people won't play anything else and that's the mentality of the 2000s.

"Oh do you want to throw Javelins? Go play Amazon!"
No, I want to play paladin and throw Javelins and I should be able to do that.

I stand with it being on weapons. The reason? Basic economy. People seem to not take into account the RAW AMOUNT OF WORK that goes into implementing things in games.

Just the model change, with all the animation work was huge. Then we have all the full ability sets for each, with more animation work. If you spent months working on all this to add it to your game would you want to tell people you can only do this if you make this extremely specific character. That will lead to very few people actually giving it a try.

Then there is the specifics of implementation in this game. If its tied to a specific ascendancy then someone who wants to do it can't until much later in the game. THIS IS EXTREMELY BAD for convincing people to take it up. These factors would reduce the number of people that actually use shapeshifting to at best 1/10 of who will with the weapon implementation.

Additionally they want us to combo our abilities. They put a lot of effort into making weapon swapping a thing. An ascendancy that is entirely "Turns on shapeshifting and empowers only shapeshifting" basically makes using non-shapeshifting skills very unattractive.

Also why do you see people theorycrafting how these shapeshifting will play out on other classes as a bad thing? If I was a game designer seeing people imagining up unique ways to play the thing I just designed would be amazing.

Oh but you said its all you see. OF COURSE THAT IS SO. We don't have great info on what the Druid ascendancies do. Besides the info we have having a giant "in the process of being changed" sticker on it we have not actually used any of it in game. All the other ascendancies we have been using for a while now. So we know what they are like in game, how they play out. How we can optimize them.

They will probably have a bunch of shapeshifter related passives on the top left of the tree. So only a Druid can access them easily.

Other ascendancies can work but you'll probably waste a ton of travel points (like 25+). Like trying to make a spellcaster Mercenary. You can, but it will cost an extra 25 points to travel to the top of the tree where all the spell passives are.

Starting position is much more important in POE2 because it takes so many passive points to get around. You can't really experiment much with all the limitations. (skills linked to weapons, travelling around the center of tree requires a lot more points, infusions on spells with support for it only top of tree, poison related stuff only on right of tree, etc.)

You have these things in POE1 too but most skills work out of the box and you as a player are just trying to find a way to make it better. In POE2 it feels like things don't work out of the box unless you do two other things as well. So the limitations matter more.

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Ispita#4020 wrote:

They managed to make monk the monk archetype. Nobody plays sorc with quarterstaffs. How did it not work with druid then? This is obviously a flaw in the design.

Actually, Sorc with quarterstaff is my main gameplay. It is sad that you do not understand the beauty of PoE because it is possible like this. It bothers me how many threads like this are in this forum of people do not understand the core game design of PoE by having a classless system.
And btw sorc with quarterstaff is quite niche (but i love to come up with stuff like that) but there are countless builds of people not using the designated weapon (deadeye with crossbows? monk with bows? and so on). Because that is the way this game is suppossed to work. And most people love it for exactly that.

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FipsDieGrille#2655 wrote:

It is sad that you do not understand the beauty of PoE because it is possible like this.

Oh I do understand that but they literally said that they want poe 2 to be more in line with traditional arpgs with somewhat simplified systems. Because poe 1 pivoted so much from it and made it much harder for new players to get into. Doing something like this exactly the opposite what they wanted.

Seems like you did not read my post at all where I stated why I understand their way of designing it.

Just to make it simple for people to understand. Let's make warrior/marauder the 2 hander archetype but make one of the sorcerer's ascendancy or ranger the best to play with 2 handed axes. This is exactly what druid and shapeshifting weapons is like. Or you want to play a spellcaster you make a sorceress not a warrior.

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Ispita#4020 wrote:

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FipsDieGrille#2655 wrote:

It is sad that you do not understand the beauty of PoE because it is possible like this.

Oh I do understand that but they literally said that they want poe 2 to be more in line with traditional arpgs with somewhat simplified systems. Because poe 1 pivoted so much from it and made it much harder for new players to get into. Doing something like this exactly the opposite what they wanted.

Seems like you did not read my post at all where I stated why I understand their way of designing it.

Just to make it simple for people to understand. Let's make warrior/marauder the 2 hander archetype but make one of the sorcerer's ascendancy or ranger the best to play with 2 handed axes. This is exactly what druid and shapeshifting weapons is like. Or you want to play a spellcaster you make a sorceress not a warrior.

I guess you get them totally wrong :D. Watch the interview of Jonathan Rogers with talkative Tri and you will understand their game design concept.

Also i read your post but there is nothing really valuable in there. The design philosophy is clear and this is what a lot of people, including me, love with PoE.